Reviewed by Jeff Bennett, Department of Communication, Denison
University

Kenneth Burke’s discussion of "trained incapacity" in Permanence
and Change emphasizes the limitations created by people’s abilities. He
explains that the intellectual equipment enabling thought can subtly conspire
against those who do not reflect on their adopted frames of reference,
inhibiting ideas that might enrich their lives. It is no small irony then that
Burke’s many writings are often utilized in pedagogy and research as a
systematic approach to criticism, not as a rhetorical heuristic for inspiring
invention. Time and again rhetorical scholars have witnessed the reduction of
Burkean criticism to a "method" rather than a critical attitude that is
productive only insofar as it exists in articulation with complex cultural
texts.

Sarah Mahan-Hays and Roger Aden in "Kenneth Burke’s
‘Attitude’ at the Crossroads of Rhetorical and Cultural Studies: A Proposal and
Case Study Illustration" offer readers an antidote to this predicament. They position
Burkean criticism not as an instrument for cleaving rhetorical figurines, but instead
as an "attitude" for struggling with complex communicative phenomena. Mahan-Hays
and Aden employ Burke’s notions of representative anecdote, literature as equipment
for living, and frames of acceptance/rejection/transition "to emphasize how
Burke’s writings about ‘attitude’ provide a means of synthesizing some of his
disparate ideas into a holistic kind of Burkean criticism" (33). The authors
acknowledge the complications inherent in defining the word "attitude," but
suggest that it is best summed up as "a strategy of interpretation and thus
more of a cognitive activity that is then reflected in one’s symbol use"
(35).

Situating Burke as a "critical attitude" merits
endorsement. It is a useful vehicle for maintaining the late theorist’s
relevance in communication studies and for initiating important conversations
about Burke in other fields of inquiry. Mahan-Hays and Aden are especially invested
in furthering the relationship that exists between communication scholars and
the eclectic discipline of cultural studies, which continues to gain capital in
our departments, journals, and classrooms. The authors advance their argument
by exploring what Burkean criticism might look like in cultural studies,
putting their heuristic into dialogue with fan reactions to the cable
television program Talk Soup. In doing so, they illustrate how a Burkean
approach stressing critical attitudes can help explain issues of popular
culture, consumption, and the "everyday."

Undoubtedly, there will be skeptics who do not see the
connection between some of Burke’s more modernist leanings and the fragmented
multiplicity of cultural studies. However, from a Burkean perspective, this seeming
contradiction is the very power inherent in such conversations. Blending the
languages of rhetoric and cultural studies has unlimited potential when one
considers the endless possibilities in activism, pedagogy, and research (and not
necessarily as discrete units). After all, both rhetorical and cultural
studies are concerned with notions of community—not just the possibilities
provided by norms but also the possibilities marginalized by them. Each is
devoted to critiques of cultural logics, the particulars of context, and the
idea that reality is mediated by performative iterations of language. At the
same time, there are many differences to be discerned among these disciplines,
and Mahan-Hays and Aden offer an opportunity to think through these continually
evolving interchanges. For instance, one might ponder how Burke’s critical
project informs seemingly unrelated genres of scholarship such as ethnography
or theories of the body. Conversely, one might consider how critical race
theory or feminist theory offers a corrective to Burke, not just in terms of
power and identity, but recalcitrance and casuistic stretching.

Proposing such intersections is not without precedent. There
are traces of Burke’s influence scattered throughout strands of cultural
theory. One such example is in anthropologist Ester Newton’s groundbreaking
work on "camp" aesthetics. Although queer theorists might be expected to turn
to Michel Foucault or Judith Butler before casting a glance at Burke, Newton exhibits how his scholarship can be useful for those who are investigating the attitudinal
relationship between marginalized audiences and popular texts. She explains
that camp is a "strategy for a situation," not a phenomena that can be
methodologically explained. Borrowing in part from Burke’s litany of terms,
she asserts that the content of camp is incongruity, the style is theatrical,
and the strategy is comic. In Newton’s writings one finds a critical attitude
expressed through a critique which might be called Burkean, not an over-reliance
on Burkean concepts for the sake of theory building.

Michel de Certeau reminds us that just because a population
does not control the production of cultural texts does not mean they cannot
control the ways in which it is consumed. Using Burke as a conceptual guide,
criticism might be approached in a similar manner. One can broach the
strictures and prospects of language with a keen eye towards creating new
frames of being. By joining Burke’s conceptual attitude with the vocabularies
of cultural studies, Mahan-Hays and Aden offer one path for entering the grand
debates of the humanities, advancing a message that is steeped in both theory
and praxis without oversimplifying the complex tasks confronted by rhetorical
and cultural scholars.